Conference calls are becoming more common in contemporary life everyday. Conference calls have proven especially useful in business communication, where several people need to be assembled cost-efficiently and fast to make informed decisions. At the same time, the mobility of the workforce has increased steadily with the increase in mobile phone use. In the prior art, this development has been addressed by devising methods for establishing mobile teleconferences.
US 2004/0131167 A1, Chang et al., “Establishing a conference call from a call-log” features a method for establishing a conference call from the call-log of a mobile phone. In this publication, conference parameters are defined in the mobile phone and transmitted to a conference bridge, which establishes the conference by calling or sending messages to participants. This document is cited here as reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,730 B1, Chow et al., “Wireless Centrex conference call adding a party” features a method comprising a myriad of steps in establishing a conference call in a wireless centrex system. In this publication, various checks and verifications are run, in order to arrange a conventional conference call in a wireless centrex system. For clarification, a wireless centrex is system where cellular users can use their mobile phones like cordless phones without incurring air-time charges.
However, the aforementioned solutions have significant disadvantages. Firstly, the use of a conference bridge or a wireless centrex system in establishing the conference involves telecommunications hardware that small enterprises and individuals have only limited and costly access. Thus the prior art conference call system is difficult to arrange on site. Secondly, the prior art solutions are incompatible with the majority of contemporary business communication systems that are based on electronic packet based communication, such as the Internet and email.
Quite clearly there is a demand on the market for a wireless conference call method, which is compatible with packet based communication methods and can be arranged cost efficiently on an enterprise site without involving unnecessary hardware.